Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 24-minute teaching, Lama Ribur Rinpoche explores guru devotion through the framework of eight benefits and eight shortcomings central to tantric Buddhist practice. He opens with a striking personal anecdote: a searing rebuke from Kyabje Kangyurwa—the root guru of Kyabje Ling Rinpoche—delivered to thirty-five senior lamas during a Guru Puja commentary. The lama’s harsh criticism that they were merely joking about practice, reading texts all day without genuine transformation, proved transformative for Rinpoche himself. He then systematically unfolds the eight benefits of proper guru-student relations: Buddhahood draws near, all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are pleased, obstacles dissolve, faults decrease, qualities increase, and ultimately the guru becomes the source of all joy and improvement. He balances this with the eight opposing shortcomings, using the Guhyasamāja tantra to illustrate that no mantra, however powerful, can purify the karma of aversion toward one’s root guru. Rinpoche concludes with a candid reminder that his own departure removes any suspicion that his exhortation serves his personal benefit. This is an essential teaching for practitioners already engaged with a qualified teacher.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 GD.mp3
UUID: 85e77b5e-eea1-4226-a544-63f4b045c510
Teacher: Lama Ribur Rinpoche
Collection: Guru Devotion (Lama Ribur Rinpoche)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 24.3 minutes
Words: ~1,841
And a lot of benefit you’re going to write that in in short terms and in long terms. And it’s something that you should think about, something you should contemplate. So just to give you an example, I had I had seventeen teachers, and the one and the most rough one was who is the is the root guru of Atisha and of Kyabje Ling Rinpoche. And he’s the one he’s the one from who Ling Rinpoche received the Kālacakra initiation and which then he passed to his own next Dalai Lama. So Kyabje Kangyurwa was a very very high lama, one of the highest at the time.
And remember he was giving once he gave a commentary to Lama Chopa to Guru Puja. And at that time, we were only Lamas in front of him. There were not many, like thirty five high Lamas and the abbot of the Tantric Colleges. And he was explaining, he was explaining the really beginning of the Lama Chöpa, which is the explanation of the merit field, which involves to visualize the guru or the lama. So I was explaining what actually lama means in in Sanskrit which is Guru and means like heavy.
Somebody or something that is like heavy. And the reason was because the reason of the explanation of being heavy it means that somebody who is recognized as being a lama or a guru is to be a very heavy qualities like he must have a lot of qualities, he must have a really sort of huge amount of the qualities of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and only a person which has a really like heavy amount or big amount of Buddha, Dharma, Buddha’s Dharma and Sangha quality it can be recognized as to be a lama or a guru. And then while he was explaining this he said but all of you, all of you and he was talking to all this lamas, he was, but all of you, is just a joke, just a laugh. All of you, you don’t have you don’t have any of those qualities and, and, you think that all those qualities are going to arise, are going to be generated only because you’re reading our text all day long. This is not the main reason why, how you’re going to achieve those qualities.
All of you are just joking, playing, concerning Dharma practice. And regard I mean, like, if you look at you, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha qualities are just a joke and just nothing else. So at that time it was really, like a really heavy scolding for all of us, but I find it really beneficial in the future. I had a lot of benefit from that. I didn’t have a single moment of aversion.
I didn’t generate even a single instant of aversion, but instead I find it very beneficial for my mind. So the eighth benefit is the that is the final one is the lama being the source of all the benefit, being being the source of all joy or the improvement. And so by by all the other benefit by all the other preceding benefit, you understand how the lama is is the savior from the the lower realm and as well as the one who makes your mental delusion to decrease and your quality to increase and is basically the source of all your benefit. So this is actually like the summarize of that is in the eighth benefit which says as Lama Tsongkhapa that Lama Tsongkhapa wrote in a special text saying the fundamental or the base of all the good qualities saying that the guru is the root, guru is the base for all your improvement, for all your achievement. And so while you are while you are meditating all this, you should contemplate all these eight benefits to to the end till the end, and then at the end, you should generate the aspiration of of having a proper devotion to your to your guru, to your lamas because of understanding all those benefits.
And you should ask blessing in order to generate a very strong very strong devotion towards your guru. And on that, after that comes and come the shortcoming of not having having a good relation towards your spiritual teacher and in the text says, the benefit are the opposite of the sorry, the shortcoming are the opposite of the benefits. What does it mean? It means means that for example the first is in that the the first benefit was this on if you relate properly to your guru then the Buddhahood comes closer and closer. So the shortcoming on not having a proper relation to your guru is that the Buddhahood is like far and far.
So you’re not going to achieve the Buddhahood very quickly and very easily if you are not relating in a proper way to your spiritual teacher. So, I mean, at the end of at the end of the meditation, when you contemplate all the benefits and you contemplate all the shortcomings of not relating in a proper way to your guru, then then in your mind should come the clear understanding that there are only benefits, there are only advantages in relating in a proper way towards your spiritual teacher and there are only mistakes or there are only faults in not not doing that. So because of this you should determine yourself to have a really good devotion, to a really good relation towards your spiritual guide. And having understood how having understood based on the contemplation on the eight benefits and the eight shortcomings or the eight disadvantages, that, then you will comprehend how, you are lucky or fortunate you are, how how lucky or fortunate you are if you can have a very good relation, if you can develop a very good devotion towards your guru, and how unlucky or unfortunate you you can get if you break that relation.
So because we human being, we always tend to look for happiness and and, like, lucky lucky situation, it comes it comes natural to, go towards the, the proper devotion. In in in in another word in other words, if you want to be happy and if you want to have to be fortunate and lucky, you should and and you should devote properly towards your towards your spiritual guide. Once you once you have accepted a teacher as your guru, then you should know that breaking that relation will will produce a huge amount of negative karma and in and you will have as a result all the eight disadvantages of not having proper relation. So which are these eight shortcomings? And I said before, are the, right opposite are just the opposite of the oh, sorry.
Which are these shortcomings? So just the opposite of the benefits, which has been, listed before. So, in in just in order to understand, if you don’t relate in a proper way to your guru, then the Buddhahood is not you’re not going to achieve Buddhahood in a very easy way. And and the second, you are going to displease all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. The third is you are going to face a lot of hindrances by human and not human.
The fourth and that all the all your negative side, all the all your faults are going to increase and the fifth is that all the quality are going to decrease and so forth. So you just need to just need to put benefit in a negative sense, and then you will have the shortcoming. Just in order to understand, for example, the first of the shortcomings, that is Buddhahood is not going to achieve in a in a like in a easy way. According to the to the Guhyasamāja root tantra, there is a quotation saying that whichever of the five of the five great unwholesome actions which are killing the parents or killing an Arhat or causing the bleeding of a Buddha or causing the schism of a Sangha. So, whichever these five negative, very great negative action you have performed, you have committed in the past, through the, through the great power of the Guhyasamāja mantra, you can you can achieve the supreme of the goal, is the Buddhahood, the unification.
And but if you generate a really strong aversion toward your towards your root guru, towards your vajra master, then nothing can be done. Like, there’s nothing that even the most precious of the mantra of Guhyasamāja can’t, like, divert or can’t clean out all this negative karma. So there’s no if you if you want to practice Dharma, if you want to achieve the complete Buddhahood, then there’s no way out, there’s no way around from apart from relating in the proper way towards your spiritual guide, to your spiritual teacher. And and then in in order to understand that, if you contemplate the eight benefits, understand how much you can gain, how much positive things, how much benefit you can gain from a proper relation. And on the other hand, how bad it can turn if you if you don’t have that proper relation.
So because there’s no way there’s no way around, there’s no way out of that, so it’s better if you generate a proper devotion and if you relate in a proper way to your spiritual teacher. You see, I’m saying that with a very sort of really open mind because I’m not the person that is going to stay here for long. It’s like, you see, if I was a person, if I was your teacher like staying here all the time then there will be some people maybe thinking well this lama is saying these things because he wants us to be devoting to him and so forth. But it’s not my case. The day after tomorrow I’m going.
So I don’t care very much. Said, I don’t care that much. So you see it might be that we maybe I’m going to meet some of you or maybe you are coming to Dharamsala, but otherwise most of you I’m not going to see anymore. So I don’t, there’s not much of my interest you see. Don’t have a lot of interest in that.
So the only reason why I said that, have to relate properly to your teacher in this case, for example, Khensur Rinpoche, and to generate the proper devotion towards him in order for you to have gain more benefit as you can. So please, I exhort you into contemplate in a detailed way which benefits, which are the qualities of a proper relation to a spiritual to a spiritual guide and which are the shortcomings, which are the faults of not having or breaking that relation. So in in so that the base base of your practice will become strong and then you can improve in a in a proper way in the future.